Sweater Thieves

Gluyaswilliams.com Update

2008-04-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

I added a batch of ten gags/illustrations done for Rand McNally to gluyaswilliams.com. These were made from scans I found on an ebay auction ages ago, I did my best to fix them up. The one I've posted here was too far gone, so I didn't post it to gw.com, but nothing is too shitty looking to put on a blog.

Danny Dutch Weekly Strip #14

2008-04-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

For the week of Apr 7-13

It took me forever to get this done. I won't be drawing these guys again because it's too hard!

Also take a look at this raw scan, before I added the graytones. (very large size)

There's an RSS feed of my Flickr gallery of weekly strips here, if you are so inclined.

Title Block

2008-04-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

I have to put in some overtime at work this week (so my comic strip for this week is lagging), but a benefit, along with time-and-a-half, of course, is coming across stuff like this:

click for larger

Back in the old days big architects firms knew a good logo when they saw one. Nowadays I'm not so sure, they're a little too plain for me. This thing was handlettered by a professional! A couple more nice bits:

A graceful "of" can make even the ugliest stencilled numbers look nice.

Danny Dutch Weekly Strip #13

2008-04-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

For the week of March 31 - April 6.

I was beginning to think I went overboard with the drawing on this, but it came out ok.

Penny by Haenigsen

2008-03-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of Penny strips by Harry Haenigsen. Haenigsen's a great stylist, his drawing's really something, in spite of all the turned-up Frankenstein noses. I've collected some jpgs of other stuff by him that I'll try to post one of these days, though I have a feeling it's not for everyone. But I think we can all appreciate the beauty of this plain-jane early 50's cover design! RIGHT?

Gluyaswilliams.com Update

2008-03-29T23:10:00.000-07:00

I added three daily strips from 1924 to gluyaswilliams.com. In an effort to get more strips up faster, I didn't go to any trouble cleaning these up, or making black-line versions. They look good either way. With luck there'll be more to come!

For more info on Gluyas Williams don't hesitate to checkout the latest issue of Comic Art Magazine, which includes a nice article by Jeet Heer and published by the estimable Buenaventura Press. This issue also features a cover by pal Tim Hensley and a additional book by other pal Ivan Brunetti. It's been on the stands for over a year, so you've probably bought one already.

Department of Markets

2008-03-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

From deep in the annals of memory.loc.gov

Little Lulu

2008-03-28T21:29:00.001-07:00

From deep in the annals of memory.loc.gov

Chinese Comics: Sanmao

2008-03-25T19:13:00.000-07:00

This will be the first of a few posts with scans of comics I got while I was in China in 2004. They're all old, as I didn't see much of anything contemporary. If I ever go back I'll try to do some legwork beforehand and find out where a comic shop is.

Anyhow, first up is Sanmao, who's a very popular chracter over there with a long running strip. Sanmao literally means "three hairs" or "three whiskers," and he's a put-upon, typically homeless urchin just trying to get by. These comics are from the late 40's during China's cultural revolution, so you see lots of political stuff going on. I'm not sure if the book I have starts with the very first strip or if it's a ways into the story, but here he's just heading to the city and seems pretty naive:

He's taken in by a kindly old fisherman, however:

After being back on his own for a few strips he's taken in by a family, until their house burns down, then he's back on the street alone again. In the book he goes through a series of these kinds of ups and downs, matching wits with other street kids, overfed fat rich people, wild animals, the thoughtless, the greedy, the mean. He dreams of a better life, but not much comes of it, even though he's a good guy.

That's it! Mostly pretty good comics, but maybe a little melodramatic or political in places. They're almost all wordless, too, for easy reading.

Danny Dutch Weekly Strip #12

2008-03-25T10:41:00.000-07:00

For the week of March 24-30.

Take a look at the pencil versions of two of these panels in the previous post.

Half Way

2008-03-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

These are the pencil roughs for panels 3 and 4 of weekly strip #12, which I'll post next Wednesday, March 26.

Danny Dutch Weekly Strip #11

2008-03-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

For the week of March 10-16.

I hope I can stay on schedule from now on, but it's hard to get these done now that I have a job!

Reasons

2008-03-04T15:05:00.000-08:00

Well, not much is happening for me lately--just moved into a new apartment, but I don't have enough of my stuff transported to get any comics or scanning or much of anything at all done. However, I mean to have Weekly Strip #11 for next Wednesday, March 12, and a post or two with scans of Chinese comics I brought back from my trip there in 2004; I have some neat stuff that I rediscovered during my packing. I may also get some stuff together to add to gluyaswilliams.com, but that's within the next few months, not particularly anytime soon.

Please keep reading!

Links to Me

2008-02-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

I've gotten a little bit of new traffic in the last few days from Tom Spurgeon and Newsarama's blog--I hope you guys like what I've got here. Unfortunately I don't have anything very new up and I took this week off from my comic strip because I moved. SO check out the old strips here or at my Flickr page, and bookmark, because something new will show up eventually...

Weekly Strip #10

2008-02-14T16:19:00.000-08:00

For the week of Feb 11-17

So much work for so little payoff! I might take off next week...

Weekly Strip #9

2008-02-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

For the week of Feb 4-10

My internet is back, surprisingly

More Reasons

2008-02-04T17:13:00.000-08:00

AT&T has let my DSL service get interrupted, so my week vacation from weekly comics may go into two weeks...

SUPERTRASH This Weekend

2008-01-31T14:13:00.000-08:00

This is it! The big Portland junk movie fest is on this weekend, February 1-3. I'm mentioning it because I submitted a poster for their Fantagraphics-sponsored "Re-Imagined Cult Movie Poster" art show (as seen in this post). Check out the Supertrash Myspace profile for showtimes and details. I wish I could go and see Mad Love with Peter Lorre and Colin Clive. I'll just have to invite those guys over and watch the DVD instead.

Shopping, Prints, BFFs

2008-01-30T14:12:00.000-08:00

I took a look in the Family store this past Saturday in L.A. I saw that they have a couple of the litho prints (titled Stamina) that John Hankiewicz made to commemorate our SPX '06 experience. John, Onsmith, Ivan Brunetti and I each did a little drawing and John did the prints, it came out nice!

Up above is the drawing that I contributed, scanned from my sketchbook. The four of us also made a mini-comic for the show that we were handing out free. I'm not sure where you might be able to find one of them now; I don't know if I even have one. But they were neat! Four new drawings apiece, very small size.

Anyway, the print was priced at $20 at Family. They also had more of John's prints for sale, and dozens of other things. Check it out and tell them I sent you. And then tell me that I sent you.

And don't forget to bookmark Hankiewicz's and Onsmith's blogs for a heaping helping of their naive artwork. Hankiewicz is in the new Mome #10; Onsmith is in the new Hotwire Comics #2. If you need help finding Ivan Brunetti comics, you're stupid.

Reasons!

2008-01-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that this site hasn't been here for a few days--i'm using a free webhost (Doteasy, which has always been really nice, service-wise; use me as your referrer!) and I exceeded my monthly traffic quota of 1gb. I chalked this up to lots of hits from Google Image Search, where somebody will download my whole site to see one thumbnail of boobies. So I uploaded a robots.txt file to try and stave off hits from there; if I did it right, soon none of the images from this site will show up in the image search. Bad or good, I don't know, we'll see.

NO COMIC STRIP THIS WEEK: I also took a vacation from my weekly strip with the site outage as my excuse. Back next Wednesday, Feb 6, for sure! I've been getting a pretty good response to them...if only they could earn me some money! Speaking of which:

I've been trying to FIND A JOB this week, so far not a lot of luck. I must be looking too far up on the foodchain or something. Ironically, a job involving 'food' and 'chain' may be in my immediate future. If you'd like to help, it would be appreciated, please get in touch! (gosh, that reads like I'm asking for donations or something--not at all...leads, leads!)

Thanks for reading. I think I'll do one more dry, texty post after this, and then get back to not posting anything. Alienated yet??

1906 Atlantic Monthly on Comics

2008-01-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Boingboing.net I learned that The Atlantic Monthly now has its archive freely viewable. I just started looking at it and already found this great quote about Sunday comics from 1906:

"Ten or a dozen years ago,—the exact date is here immaterial,—an enterprising newspaper publisher conceived the idea of appealing to what is known as the American "sense of humor" by printing a so-called comic supplement in colors. He chose Sunday as of all days the most lacking in popular amusements, carefully restricted himself to pictures without humor and color without beauty, and presently inaugurated a new era in American journalism. The colored supplement became an institution. No Sunday is complete without it,—not because its pages invariably delight, but because, like flies in suummer, there is no screen that will altogether exclude them."

also, this one's good--these are both in the opener of the story!:

"One and all they unite vigorously, as if driven by a perverse and cynical intention, to prove the American sense of humor a national shame and degredation. Fortunately the public has so little to say about its reading matter that one may fairly suspend judgment."

The author here is Ralph Bergengren, and this article is his indictment of comics, specifcally color comics (apparently the color printing of 1906 wasn't to his liking, as he says the black and white versions look "twice as attractive"), and the simple, cheap humor they dealt in. I'm actually still not sure it isn't satirical, but I'm assuming he's in earnest.

On some points I agree with him, on others he's crazy. His descriptions of the immoral activities of the color supplement sound better than any turn of the century comic i've ever seen, more lurid, lunatic and wily--he should have been making comics. On the other hand, he makes the point that all the "types" created by the cartoonists dilutes the variety that humor generally has to offer that maybe partly true.

The writing overall here is a lot of fun to read, even though the author is a stuffy traditionalist. If you're interested in old-time comics, take a look here. He cites Winsor McKay as one of the good ones, while rival versions of the Yellow Kid (I think? not specifically named) both stink.

To me, reading this a hundred years later, all he proves is that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and I think that's what happens anytime you read a hundred year old magazine article of any kind. Strangely, I'd really feel good about making a comic composed of "pictures without humor and color without beauty."

Weekly Strip #8

2008-01-23T16:41:00.000-08:00

For the week of Jan 21-27

Supplies

2008-01-21T23:19:00.000-08:00

Just felt like putting up a picture of the pens and stuff I've been cartooning with lately. I ink all the characters with the brush pen. The backgrounds are done with the 512 nib and the brush pen. B-3 for the panel borders, B-5 for the balloon edges and other lines here and there, B-6 for that stuff, too. I use the Pigma Graphic 1 for the lettering, but may try switching to B-5 or B-3 for that eventually. I use the Micron 8 for fixing stuff here and there. I have a couple of brushes but only really use those for filling in blacks or applying white corrections.

That's a lead holder I got from the Colorado Art Istitute when I went there, I presume all brands are alike, mine's pretty good. I use a pretty hard lead, but I can't remember the number. It seems like it's 2H or 2B? I dunno. It comes out pretty light, erases pretty easily.

I also use a bottle of ink, right now it's Bombay brand, seems pretty good, and Pro White for white out and snazzy white on black effects, if I feel like it (i've done it once or twice only).

I really like the lines I get from the 512 nib and I've been using it all over the place on my comic strips. I really never used nibs very much, but I finally gave them a try after having one of those Speedball starter packs floating around forever. If you're scared you should try them out yourself. I still haven't gotten the hang of the Hunt 102, though.

New Weekly Strip

2008-01-17T11:13:00.000-08:00

For the week of Jan 14-20

UPDATE: I've gotten a lot of nice feedback on this one from here and there; thanks a lot for looking, everyone!

I also made a banner that links to the Flickr set of these strips. It's there on the right, or if by some chance you're looking at the RSS, here it is:

Or if you don't like Flickr, you can click the weekly strip label to see them here or if you don't want to do that either, they're all on reliablecomics.com. EASY

Supertrash: Venus In Furs Poster Redo

2008-01-16T13:27:00.000-08:00

I did this for the Supertrash Film Fest / Art Show that's upcoming on February 1-3 in Portland, Ore. I'm not sure if they automatically accept whatever's sent in or if it's juried somehow, but we'll see. Pals Tom Neely, Chris Cilla, Alex Holden and Jim Rugg have also done one, probably others I don't know about.

Anyway, I did Venus in Furs, a terrible movie from the late 60's about a horny jazz musician and a hot naked ghost(?) lady, and a hot jazz singer lady who never gets naked and three murderous jerks. Don't bother watching it.

This is also my excuse for not having a new weekly strip for today. Not the real reason, but it's good enough. I may have a strip for tomorrow. Sorry!